Jan Havickszoon Steen

kjs on 27th May 2022

His Early Life

Jan Havickszoon Steen (1626-1679) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He was born in Leiden. The Netherlands in 1626. He was the eldest son of Havick Steen. Besides being a brewer and grain merchant, his father Jan Steen was also a painter of genre or everyday scenes, often lively interiors with a moral there. Steen enrolled at the University of Leiden in 1646 when he was twenty-four years old. Barely two years after his enrolment, he became one of the founding members of Leiden’s newly formed Saint Luke’s Guild. According to an art historian, Steen received his art education from Jan van Goyen, a landscape painter who had settled in The Hague.

Cheerful and Comical Presentation

Jan Steen was good at presenting wise words in a funny way through his painting skills and has been often compared to the French comic playwright Moliere. Tavern scenes, a wide range of family gatherings in houses or exteriors, cheerful episodes with peasants, children at school are among some of the subjects that he painted often. He is also famous for painting historical and religious paintings with originality. Some of his compositions are anecdotal but conceal a moralising message that illustrates a popular saying. Jan Steen painted his ‘Self-portrait playing a Lute‘ when he lived in Haarlem in the 1660s.

Influence of Famous Painter Frans Hals

His paintings made during this period reveal the influence of Frans Hals on his art. He has included his own portraits in many of his paintings in a variety of costumes. His painting ‘Adriaen van de Velde’ is a wonderful depiction of landscape with animals in it. Another addition to the list of his landscapes with the addition of animals and humans in them is ‘The Church of St. Cosmas and St. Damian and The Franciscan Monastery at Igaracu’

Jan Steen married van Goyen’s daughter Margriet and he had seven children from her. He stayed at the Hague during the next few years. Thereafter, Jan Steen moved to Deft in 1654 and to Haarlem in 1661. His paintings frequently use inns as part of the subjects of paintings. Experts feel that this reflects on his background as the son of a brewer and tavernkeeper himself. He was very good at capturing the subtleties of facial expressions, especially those of children in his paintings.

His Well-known Paintings

Some of his famous paintings are ‘The Dancing Couple’ (1663), ‘The Feast of Saint Nicholas’ (1665), ‘Beware of Luxury, (1663), ‘Woman at the Toilet’, (1663), ‘The Dissolute Household’, (1664), ‘The Happy Family’ (1668), ‘Children Teaching a Cat to Dance’ (1663), ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, ‘Rhetoricians at a Window’, ‘School Teacher’, ‘The Feast of Saint Nicholas’, etc.

‘The Dissolute Household’

Jan Steen’s painting ‘The Dissolute Household‘ is a comedic presentation of the traditions of the seventeenth century, portraying a family committing various offences against traditional moral codes. The painter has made a satire of himself by painting the master of the house with features of his own. Apparently oblivious of the chaos around him, he is busy in moves indicative of love. The mother in slumber is unaware of her pocked being picked. The dog is gulping at the leftover food in the foreground. A monkey painted appears to symbolise the subhuman temperament in man, of lust, greed, gluttony and shamelessness. Experts say that the members of the Jan Steen family modelled for this scene and the painting is often called ‘Jan Steen Household’.

‘The Dancing Couple’

Jan Steen painted ‘The Dancing Couple’ in 1663 and it is a depiction of a boisterous party with a dancing couple in the centre of the painting. The setting of the painting is a village fair that holds many symbolic references in Dutch art. Jan Steen creates a festive environment in this painting.